1 00:00:05,600 --> 00:00:10,960 Everyone, welcome to the Cornell  Contemporary China Initiative lecture series.   2 00:00:10,960 --> 00:00:15,040 My name is Alan Carlson, I'm an associate  professor in the government department here   3 00:00:15,040 --> 00:00:20,320 at Cornell and the director of the Chinese  Asia Pacific Studies, or CAPS, program and   4 00:00:20,320 --> 00:00:28,080 it's my honor to be hosting this lecture series  this year. I'd like to begin briefly by thanking   5 00:00:28,080 --> 00:00:34,240 the East Asia Program for their support of  the CCCI series, uh it's been an ongoing   6 00:00:34,240 --> 00:00:37,760 uh set of talks we've done for a number  of years now at Cornell that have been   7 00:00:37,760 --> 00:00:43,840 well received and I think really have added to the  discussion of China here in Ithaca. In addition,   8 00:00:44,400 --> 00:00:51,200 I'd like to thank the donors, the main donors to  CAPS, Michael Zak and Brittany and Adam Levinson   9 00:00:51,760 --> 00:00:57,440 for their support of the program. The CCCI  lecture series this fall began with a simply   10 00:00:57,440 --> 00:01:02,640 seemingly simple question, "what is China?"  It hinges on the concept that answering such   11 00:01:02,640 --> 00:01:06,480 a query can only be accomplished through  addressing a set of additional questions,   12 00:01:06,480 --> 00:01:12,320 such as what are the constraints of thinking  of china as being co-determinant with the PRC,   13 00:01:12,320 --> 00:01:16,800 what spaces open up if we critically engage  the almost naturalized tendency to do so?   14 00:01:17,680 --> 00:01:23,440 What practices are employed by states and people  to give meaning to the construct of China and to   15 00:01:23,440 --> 00:01:28,560 determine who belongs within its borders and  who is outside its territory? Our speakers,   16 00:01:28,560 --> 00:01:31,920 beginning with Barbara Demick last month,  who many of you listened to as well,   17 00:01:32,880 --> 00:01:37,920 demonstrate that such questions touch upon  necessarily also touch upon what is not China.   18 00:01:38,640 --> 00:01:42,640 In making such a turn they address some of  the most pressing and significant political   19 00:01:42,640 --> 00:01:48,480 and social issues now facing China and the rest  of the world. The second of our speakers in the   20 00:01:48,480 --> 00:01:53,840 series is James Millward of Georgetown,  he'll be followed next month by C.K. Lee   21 00:01:53,840 --> 00:01:59,360 of UCLA and Shelley Rigger of Davidson.  All talks, as you can see, are online and   22 00:01:59,360 --> 00:02:03,360 they're open to everyone, so please register  for the future talks and tell your friends.   23 00:02:04,080 --> 00:02:09,360 As for today's talk, James Millward is professor  of inter-societal history at the Walsh School   24 00:02:09,360 --> 00:02:15,280 of Foreign Service at Georgetown. His areas of  research include the Qing Empire, the Silk Road,   25 00:02:15,280 --> 00:02:19,840 Eurasian lutes and music and history, you can see  a few of those in the background, and by the way,   26 00:02:19,840 --> 00:02:25,680 Jim also plays many of these instruments, I've  had it's been fun to hear him um a few times   27 00:02:25,680 --> 00:02:31,600 late in the evening and uh us for today focusing  also on historical and contemporary Xinjiang.   28 00:02:32,160 --> 00:02:37,600 His publications are many, most significantly  "Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang,"   29 00:02:38,240 --> 00:02:42,960 which first came out in 2007 and is being  republished this year, I'm assuming this is a   30 00:02:42,960 --> 00:02:49,840 significantly revised version. He's written in all  the top academic journals and also has contributed   31 00:02:49,840 --> 00:02:55,280 op-eds on contemporary China to outlets such as  New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian,   32 00:02:55,280 --> 00:03:01,280 Los Angeles Review, Books, etc., etc. Frankly,  he's one of the world's leading experts on the   33 00:03:01,280 --> 00:03:05,920 history of Xinjiang and Central Asia and has  been at the forefront of ongoing discussions   34 00:03:05,920 --> 00:03:12,960 of the assimilationist turn in Chinese policies  in Xinjiang since 2017. Uh Jim is someone I've   35 00:03:12,960 --> 00:03:19,040 known for a long time, no pressure Jim, but the  expectations here are high hahah. The title of   36 00:03:19,040 --> 00:03:24,800 your talk is "Decolonizing Chinese Historiography  with special attention to Xinjiang- Xinjiang,"   37 00:03:25,360 --> 00:03:31,200 Jim, welcome, albeit virtually, to Cornell.  Thank you very much Alan for that for that   38 00:03:31,200 --> 00:03:39,280 introduction and for inviting me uh, I'm debuting  a paper I've been working on uh for a while. Uh   39 00:03:39,280 --> 00:03:45,760 I wrote it actually just before COVID began and  was supposed to deliver it as a keynote somewhere   40 00:03:45,760 --> 00:03:51,840 and that event has now been cancelled twice, um  so I've been kind of playing around with this for,   41 00:03:52,720 --> 00:03:57,600 as I said, some- some time and so you're getting  kind of you know some of the ideas in the first   42 00:03:57,600 --> 00:04:00,960 draft. I don't have time to do all of them, but  I'll try and give you a sense of the whole and   43 00:04:00,960 --> 00:04:07,680 then drill in on what I think are kind of some of  the more interesting parts if I can. And so let me   44 00:04:07,680 --> 00:04:16,960 go to my- some slides that I have here, here we  go. So you're seeing a opening slide, Alan? Yes. 45 00:04:19,280 --> 00:04:26,080 Um all right! So uh this is a a shot of what's  called Red Square at Georgetown University,   46 00:04:26,080 --> 00:04:29,200 it's a brick square under one of  the main teaching buildings there.   47 00:04:29,920 --> 00:04:37,040 This is from the August of  2019 or September of 2019. 48 00:04:38,480 --> 00:04:43,680 As you can see, someone wrote stop police  brutality, stop political arrests, this was around   49 00:04:43,680 --> 00:04:49,600 the time of the Hong Kong demonstrations and then  someone else came in underneath, I'm assuming it's   50 00:04:49,600 --> 00:04:56,080 someone else, and wrote Hong Kong belongs to  China, and there are some other slogans written   51 00:04:56,080 --> 00:05:01,440 in chalk on this square uh as well uh making  it clear that this was about this was about   52 00:05:01,440 --> 00:05:07,360 Hong Kong. Now, I was really struck uh by just  this little exchange right in front of you here   53 00:05:09,200 --> 00:05:16,640 because in a way, in a bumper sticker  length, it really sort of sums up what is   54 00:05:17,200 --> 00:05:24,960 really the same response in in official  PRC narratives to criticism of policies,   55 00:05:24,960 --> 00:05:29,920 particularly with regarding to uh regard to  Tibet or Xinjiang or Hong Kong, in this case, or   56 00:05:30,560 --> 00:05:37,920 perhaps even Taiwan or to non-Han peoples  sometimes, and this response goes to,   57 00:05:37,920 --> 00:05:43,600 immediately, this idea of belonging, possession,  or sovereignty, you know, over whatever place   58 00:05:44,320 --> 00:05:52,160 um is is is under consideration at this  point. Uh and it's really very similar to   59 00:05:52,160 --> 00:05:57,840 this the response that we see in official white  papers, which are often released right at the   60 00:05:57,840 --> 00:06:04,560 moment when there is international criticism of  some policies with regard to a non-Han people or   61 00:06:04,560 --> 00:06:10,720 a peripheral part of of the PRC, this was one  released in November 18 regarding Xinjiang,   62 00:06:10,720 --> 00:06:16,320 of course, when all the information about  the the camps and birth suppressions and   63 00:06:17,120 --> 00:06:22,480 incarcerations of hundreds of thousands of  people and so on had come out about Xinjiang um.   64 00:06:23,680 --> 00:06:27,520 And of course, those of us who work in the  China field on these sorts of issues are very   65 00:06:28,080 --> 00:06:34,480 uh familiar with the, you know, zigu yilai  xinjiang jiu ru zhongguo zhi bantu, since   66 00:06:34,480 --> 00:06:37,360 ancient times Xinjiang has been  part of China and there's a slight   67 00:06:38,560 --> 00:06:46,080 variation on that in this in this white paper, um  mentioning the and stressing this multicultural   68 00:06:47,440 --> 00:06:52,480 aspects of Xinjiang, the many different cultures  there, but they're an inseparable part of Chinese   69 00:06:52,480 --> 00:06:57,440 culture in bold type and then when we get  down a little bit into the historical summary,   70 00:06:58,880 --> 00:07:05,600 uh Western Han united Xinjiang, right.  And again, this is very familiar to   71 00:07:06,240 --> 00:07:12,160 uh to any of us who've worked on these on these  areas, this is how the narrative uh the narrative   72 00:07:12,160 --> 00:07:21,760 goes and it goes back to the earliest point of uh  ownership or sovereignty, you know, of of China   73 00:07:22,880 --> 00:07:27,440 of whatever place we're talking about. So we can  call this the, you know, the x belongs to China   74 00:07:28,480 --> 00:07:36,960 uh argument and I've always been uh struck by  this again it's very familiar, but but this time,   75 00:07:36,960 --> 00:07:45,280 when seeing the, you know, the exchange in Red  Square at Georgetown um, I was struck by what a   76 00:07:45,280 --> 00:07:53,280 non-sequitur it actually is, right, because uh  there's there's global criticism of a particular   77 00:07:53,280 --> 00:07:59,360 policy or set of policies going on in Xinjiang and  then the response is Xinjiang belongs to China,   78 00:07:59,360 --> 00:08:03,520 or or Hong Kong in that exchange, but you  know, it's the same response, Xinjiang   79 00:08:03,520 --> 00:08:12,560 belongs to china on this. Um and uh I think  it's a non-sequitur for um for a few reasons.   80 00:08:13,760 --> 00:08:19,280 Um, first of all, the response to criticism  is really the response to the wrong question   81 00:08:19,280 --> 00:08:25,840 because, generally, no one is challenging  sovereignty of Xinjiang, or even of Hong Kong,   82 00:08:25,840 --> 00:08:30,720 maybe some of the Hong Kong demonstrators, you  know, were pushing up against that, but but the   83 00:08:31,360 --> 00:08:35,520 main voices in Hong Kong were not  claiming that Hong Kong was a separate   84 00:08:35,520 --> 00:08:40,160 separate country separate country, and that's not  necessarily what the international community it's   85 00:08:40,160 --> 00:08:44,640 generally not what the international community  is saying about Xinjiang or Tibet either,   86 00:08:44,640 --> 00:08:48,160 so in a way it's a response to a  question that hasn't been been asked. 87 00:08:51,040 --> 00:08:57,760 And also, the second problem with this is  uh sovereignty, ownership, in and of itself,   88 00:08:58,320 --> 00:09:05,840 doesn't give a state a right to abuse  its citizens, right, um and simply saying   89 00:09:07,120 --> 00:09:12,880 that that, you know, uh in response to criticism  and policies, that a particular region is   90 00:09:12,880 --> 00:09:16,880 sovereign, again, doesn't answer the question  and I call this sort of the wife beater defense,   91 00:09:16,880 --> 00:09:23,040 right, you know, um someone says stop beating your  wife and then I say she's my wife I'll beat her   92 00:09:23,040 --> 00:09:29,200 if I want to, right, that's that's the logic  of this x belongs to China sort of response.   93 00:09:29,840 --> 00:09:34,560 But there's a third thing that's striking  about that non-sequitur response and that's   94 00:09:34,560 --> 00:09:37,520 really the subject of what I wanted  what I want to talk about today. 95 00:09:40,320 --> 00:09:41,040 And that is 96 00:09:43,120 --> 00:09:46,320 and that is what, sorry 97 00:09:48,480 --> 00:09:54,720 lost between my screens here. So that's what I  want to talk today um and this this argument that,   98 00:09:54,720 --> 00:10:01,680 you know, such and such a territory um, about  which there are there are uh human rights   99 00:10:01,680 --> 00:10:07,200 uh complaints, um that it belongs to  China, the document depends on a peculiar   100 00:10:07,200 --> 00:10:12,080 uh and very idio- idiosyncratic  way of looking at Chinese history   101 00:10:13,280 --> 00:10:20,720 and even an exceptionalist way. It's a completely  normalized paradigm that we really all use it's   102 00:10:20,720 --> 00:10:27,440 one that's embedded in every China 101 course,  it's it's it's structuring all the textbooks,   103 00:10:28,160 --> 00:10:34,400 you find it in television documentaries and other  kind of more popular portrayals of the Chinese   104 00:10:34,400 --> 00:10:40,160 past, it's in maps that we use to illustrate our  discussions, it's in charts, it's in timelines,   105 00:10:40,800 --> 00:10:44,880 and it's in the very language, the very  terminology that we use to talk about   106 00:10:44,880 --> 00:10:51,840 Chinese history, and, in fact, the language  that we make students memorize. This paradigm   107 00:10:51,840 --> 00:10:58,320 treats China, something we call China, as a  metaphysical entity entity that's unconstrained,   108 00:10:58,320 --> 00:11:04,640 really, by space and time. China is seen as  occupying places, even at times when it didn't.   109 00:11:05,440 --> 00:11:11,280 As continuing to always be China even when the  avatars of China, what we call the dynasties,   110 00:11:11,280 --> 00:11:15,600 even when these dynasties were competing states,  locked in bloody struggles to destroy each other.   111 00:11:17,040 --> 00:11:22,720 In some more extreme versions of the paradigm,  this timeless China has forever occupied the   112 00:11:22,720 --> 00:11:28,880 territory that is now comprised by the maximal  extent of the Qing empire and the PRC today,   113 00:11:29,920 --> 00:11:33,840 or even beyond that if we include the  nine-dash line in the South China Sea,   114 00:11:33,840 --> 00:11:40,720 which is now claimed as historical patrimony in  China. And in these in this argument as well,   115 00:11:40,720 --> 00:11:46,560 the concept of Chinese people has forever  incorporated all of the peoples who live   116 00:11:46,560 --> 00:11:53,200 now or whoever have lived within the 20th century  and 21st century territory of the PRC plus Taiwan.   117 00:11:54,720 --> 00:12:00,960 But always in that in that past, it's the Han  people, or the Chinese people, who have been the   118 00:12:00,960 --> 00:12:06,720 majority within that within that territory, and  everyone else other peoples are called minority   119 00:12:06,720 --> 00:12:13,120 minzu, even when you're going back to to the  bronze age and archaeological findings like this. 120 00:12:15,360 --> 00:12:21,680 So that's what I'm what I call this  paradigm of continuous of of political unity   121 00:12:22,480 --> 00:12:30,080 and political continuity since  ancient times. Now uh, in the PRC, 122 00:12:32,160 --> 00:12:38,240 this narrative didn't used to assert, necessarily,  that peoples were all racially linked.   123 00:12:39,440 --> 00:12:45,680 In the early 20th century, some nationalists and  the guomindong did initially claim that all of the   124 00:12:45,680 --> 00:12:50,080 peoples of China, and there they were talking  about the five the five peoples of the Han,   125 00:12:50,080 --> 00:12:56,640 Manchu, Mongol, Tibetan, and Tatars or Muslims.  They did claim that or that they were racially   126 00:12:56,640 --> 00:13:03,040 linked, Chiang Kai-shek made that made that claim,  but that wasn't part of PRC framing of this issue   127 00:13:04,560 --> 00:13:08,000 until recently because lately I've  been seeing some of the new uses   128 00:13:08,000 --> 00:13:15,840 of this concept of of zhonghua as a kind  of super minzu. Uh I've been seeing some   129 00:13:15,840 --> 00:13:19,840 hints of racialization of this  discourse of Chinese continuity.   130 00:13:21,760 --> 00:13:27,280 So if you can see this, this is a statement  from Xi Jinping, a recent speech by Xi Jinping,   131 00:13:28,880 --> 00:13:35,920 uh well September 2020, so a year ago or so, at  the Xinjiang Central Work Forum. Uh and this is a   132 00:13:35,920 --> 00:13:43,280 uh he used a phrase here that's been um used  since at least 2018 uh you see I put it in blue,   133 00:13:43,280 --> 00:13:48,240 it's the second part of that sentence  where he says that every minzu of Xinjiang,   134 00:13:48,240 --> 00:13:54,560 or every nationality or ethnic group of Xinjiang,  is a family member linked to Chinese bloodlines.   135 00:13:55,280 --> 00:14:00,400 So it's this word xuemai, or bloodlines, here  and the idea of family membership that kind of   136 00:14:00,400 --> 00:14:09,440 hints at a a racial uh idea that's beginning  to creep into this unity unity narrative. 137 00:14:12,640 --> 00:14:18,320 All right, so this narrative is very familiar  to China specialists um. It's teleological,   138 00:14:18,320 --> 00:14:24,640 it's nationalistic um as such, in a way  it's similar to most national histories of   139 00:14:24,640 --> 00:14:30,800 of any place, right, all of those uh tend to  tell a unified story, teleological story, about   140 00:14:30,800 --> 00:14:37,760 whatever modern nation we're talking about. And  what this narrative does is it gives us, you know,   141 00:14:37,760 --> 00:14:42,720 we talk about a continuous political entity called  China, even when it's clear that there wasn't such   142 00:14:42,720 --> 00:14:47,600 a continuous political entity, but rather many  different monarchies of different types with   143 00:14:47,600 --> 00:14:53,520 different names, different rulers, the rulers had  different were from different linguistic groups   144 00:14:54,080 --> 00:14:59,120 and located in different places in what is now  China, some in the north, some in the south,   145 00:14:59,120 --> 00:15:03,760 uh some occupying larger territories,  some occupying quite small territories.   146 00:15:05,280 --> 00:15:14,640 One of the most salient contradictions uh within  this within this story um are is the the issue of   147 00:15:14,640 --> 00:15:20,800 what are sometimes called "alien" or "conquest  dynasties," you know, such as the Khitan Liao,   148 00:15:20,800 --> 00:15:27,040 the Jurchen Jin, the Mongol Yuan, the Manchu  Qing, right. And if you think about it it's really   149 00:15:27,600 --> 00:15:35,840 it's a fairly bizarre oxy oxymoron, right, because  these are non-Chinese, right, clearly identified   150 00:15:35,840 --> 00:15:41,760 as such, and yet they are Chinese dynasties.  So they're simultaneously Chinese and alien.   151 00:15:43,440 --> 00:15:50,720 And even though most scholars now don't talk about  sinicization the way we used to several decades   152 00:15:50,720 --> 00:15:56,000 ago, you know, as this magic, assimilative  force that always happened to conquerors, uh   153 00:15:56,000 --> 00:16:01,440 in particular research on the on the Qing empire  uh in recent decades has really, you know, shown   154 00:16:01,440 --> 00:16:07,040 that not to have been the case with the Manchus.  But so even if we don't accept sinicization um   155 00:16:07,040 --> 00:16:12,960 as a real thing, as a real, you know, empirical,  historical phenomena that happened. Nonetheless,   156 00:16:12,960 --> 00:16:19,120 we still include all of these so-called "alien  dynasties" or "conquest dynasties" in our lineup   157 00:16:19,120 --> 00:16:25,280 that we call Chinese dynasties. So I'm  not at all saying that the Liao, the Jin,   158 00:16:25,280 --> 00:16:31,040 the Yuan, the Wei, the Qing, or other so-called  "alien states" are not part of Chinese history,   159 00:16:31,040 --> 00:16:37,760 I'm saying that they are, but precisely because of  their role in this story it's abundantly clear to   160 00:16:37,760 --> 00:16:43,120 me that Chinese history cannot be a story  of political continuity and ethnonational   161 00:16:43,120 --> 00:16:49,840 homogeneity across all the millennia, but rather  it's a story of interactions, often adversarial,   162 00:16:50,800 --> 00:16:56,240 among a panoply, a large group of territorially  and ethnographically diverse states   163 00:16:56,240 --> 00:17:03,040 across the vast geographical canvas. And  as such, this story, then, is actually not   164 00:17:03,040 --> 00:17:08,960 so different from that of Europe or from  that of the Islamic world, or the Islamicate,   165 00:17:08,960 --> 00:17:14,720 as it's called by world historians, including  the Middle East but also Central Asia. 166 00:17:16,880 --> 00:17:24,160 So uh so from that realization uh  and and realizing that we, you know,   167 00:17:24,160 --> 00:17:29,040 are are talking as if something that was not  politically continuous is politically continuous,   168 00:17:29,600 --> 00:17:35,760 um I'm wondering where that approach comes from  and and how is it that we still continue to talk   169 00:17:35,760 --> 00:17:40,480 about it even though it seems quite obviously,  you know, not to have been the case. And I see   170 00:17:40,480 --> 00:17:46,640 these problems, or the reasons we talk in this  way, arise from some paradigmatic concepts in   171 00:17:46,640 --> 00:17:52,240 Chinese historiography and are reflected in and  also arise from a lot of the terminology they use.   172 00:17:52,880 --> 00:17:56,400 So I'll talk mainly today about  some of these paradigmatic concepts. 173 00:17:58,720 --> 00:18:03,520 I'm going to start here uh with something that  should be familiar, I've already mentioned   174 00:18:03,520 --> 00:18:07,920 sinicization, and that kind of goes  together with a couple other of concept   175 00:18:07,920 --> 00:18:13,040 of a couple other concepts. One of those is  the tribute system, or the tributary system,   176 00:18:13,040 --> 00:18:21,520 another one is this idea of of a tianxia realm uh,  and in which the politics worked differently than   177 00:18:21,520 --> 00:18:27,760 in in other parts in other places of the world.  Now a lot has been written about this bundle of   178 00:18:27,760 --> 00:18:32,560 concepts already, particularly the idea of the  tribute system, and so I'm not going to talk too   179 00:18:32,560 --> 00:18:39,920 much about it, there's a lot of articles from 20  years ago and even more recently that have really   180 00:18:39,920 --> 00:18:47,200 challenged it as this key concept, challenging,  using it as a key concept in our study of China   181 00:18:47,760 --> 00:18:55,600 from many angles. And again, as I mentioned  before, recent work on the Qing, the Qing empire,   182 00:18:55,600 --> 00:19:03,600 uh the so-called new new Qing history, has really  challenged this and um shown that that none of   183 00:19:03,600 --> 00:19:10,080 these ideas really are empirically uh the case,  or if they are they're they're representations of   184 00:19:10,080 --> 00:19:19,360 an of an ideological norm, an ideological world  view, rather than a real uh world order. But   185 00:19:19,360 --> 00:19:24,480 nevertheless, these ideas are still very much  with us, particularly the idea that through the   186 00:19:24,480 --> 00:19:29,520 tribute system uh China, and here we're generally  talking about early modern and modern china,   187 00:19:29,520 --> 00:19:35,040 so the Ming and Qing Empires, this idea that China  managed its international relations of East Asia   188 00:19:35,600 --> 00:19:45,760 in a peaceful way and that China never expanded  militarily. So um, one example of a recent way in   189 00:19:45,760 --> 00:19:55,600 which this concept popped up was in a uh interview  by Gary Locke, then US ambassador to China on the   190 00:19:55,600 --> 00:20:02,160 Charlie Rose show and he made this comment if you  look at their histories, meaning China, they've   191 00:20:02,160 --> 00:20:08,560 never really been a country that tried to invade  or go away outside their outside their borders. 192 00:20:12,240 --> 00:20:18,640 So again, this is not a surprising statement,  you hear this kind of thing fairly often,   193 00:20:18,640 --> 00:20:24,800 it's it's a concept um which has sometimes been  called the notion of "Confucian Peace," right,   194 00:20:26,080 --> 00:20:31,280 and you still hear it referred to, political  scientists are fond of of looking at the   195 00:20:31,280 --> 00:20:36,960 tributary system as potentially a way of managing  international relations that was different from   196 00:20:36,960 --> 00:20:44,640 how international relations were managed in in the  west, either pre or post-westphalian like this. 197 00:20:48,720 --> 00:20:51,200 Let me give you another example of this kind of   198 00:20:52,880 --> 00:20:57,920 thing, so this is a quote from a  2019 textbook by Klaus Mühlhahn   199 00:20:59,600 --> 00:21:04,720 and he wrote that the High Qing period was a time  of peace and social order, material splendor,   200 00:21:04,720 --> 00:21:10,640 cultural refinement, technological progress,  and continued territorial expansion. Again,   201 00:21:10,640 --> 00:21:16,480 doesn't seem particularly controversial, you  know, until you actually look at it closely:   202 00:21:16,480 --> 00:21:20,720 it's simultaneously a time of peace and a  time of continued territorial expansion,   203 00:21:21,520 --> 00:21:26,320 right, which, if you think about it, makes  no sense whatsoever um unless the territorial   204 00:21:26,320 --> 00:21:32,560 expansion happened in some magical way which  did not involve military force or threat of   205 00:21:32,560 --> 00:21:36,640 military force and we know, of course, that  the Qing did expand through military force   206 00:21:36,640 --> 00:21:44,560 and diplomacy and threat of military force  like that. Or I'll choose one more example, um   207 00:21:45,600 --> 00:21:48,800 this is from Tim Brook, who I understand  will be speaking to you soon, I have to say,   208 00:21:48,800 --> 00:21:53,760 he's a fabulous historian, he's one of our  greatest historians of China, and this is from the   209 00:21:53,760 --> 00:21:59,760 jacket copy of his book "Great State: China and  the World." Now, it's a little bit unfair perhaps   210 00:21:59,760 --> 00:22:02,880 to quote the jacket copy which is, you  know, of course meant to sell books,   211 00:22:04,080 --> 00:22:09,920 but most of these things that I'm looking at  here are, you know, they're maps, they're charts,   212 00:22:09,920 --> 00:22:16,160 they're textbook materials, this is our top  level, you know, the kind of first first glance   213 00:22:17,040 --> 00:22:24,160 uh impressions of Chinese history that we as a  field are giving out, so in fact the jacket copy   214 00:22:24,160 --> 00:22:29,440 is more important here, I think, than what is of  course a much more subtle and uh nuanced approach   215 00:22:29,440 --> 00:22:35,200 within the book itself. Anyway so Brook writes,  or the jacket copy writes here "China is one of   216 00:22:35,200 --> 00:22:38,880 the oldest states in the world. It achieved its  approximate current borders with the Ascendancy   217 00:22:38,880 --> 00:22:43,360 of the Yuan dynasty in the thirteenth century,  and despite the passing of one imperial dynasty   218 00:22:43,360 --> 00:22:49,200 to the next, has maintained them (these borders)  for eight centuries since. China remained China   219 00:22:49,200 --> 00:22:54,480 through the Ming, the Qing, the Republic,  the Occupation, and Communism." All right,   220 00:22:54,480 --> 00:23:00,960 so this is saying that China has remained has  has maintained its approximate current borders   221 00:23:02,400 --> 00:23:07,840 as dynasties pass from one to the  next and China remains remains China.   222 00:23:09,280 --> 00:23:15,600 Now, this is just wrong, right, the Qing  Empire was twice the size of the Ming   223 00:23:15,600 --> 00:23:23,040 and it included territory in inner Asia, which was  itself as large as Ming China had been. The Qing   224 00:23:23,040 --> 00:23:30,400 spent its first 125 years constantly at war trying  to acquire this territory. In the 18th century   225 00:23:30,400 --> 00:23:36,080 alone, the Qing fought multiple wars to conquer  Mongolia, Dzungaria, and Altishahr. It invaded   226 00:23:36,080 --> 00:23:41,040 Vietnam and Burma, repressed a major rebellion in  Taiwan, which he had conquered a century earlier,   227 00:23:41,760 --> 00:23:46,880 battled Tibetans in parts of what became Sichuan  and Qinghai, the Qing projected cavalry power all   228 00:23:46,880 --> 00:23:52,880 the way up onto the Tibetan Plateau to repel two  Nepali invasions and the Qianlong Emperor himself   229 00:23:52,880 --> 00:23:58,720 called himself the "Old Man of Ten Fulfilled  Campaigns", so "Shiquan Laoren," from these   230 00:23:58,720 --> 00:24:04,800 "Shiquan Wugong," the "Ten Great Campaigns,"  to celebrate this record of military um   231 00:24:04,800 --> 00:24:12,800 adventurism, right, so this is just three  examples um from a from a an ambassador and   232 00:24:12,800 --> 00:24:22,800 from historians who are good historians of how  these ideas of tribute system and sinicization and   233 00:24:22,800 --> 00:24:29,760 Confucian peace are still very much infiltrating  our way of talking about the past, even when   234 00:24:29,760 --> 00:24:34,160 the contradictions are right in  front of our faces. All right. 235 00:24:38,560 --> 00:24:42,640 So I now want to get to what  I think is really the big one,   236 00:24:42,640 --> 00:24:47,920 so the big paradigmatic issue here, but this is  one that's surprisingly been very little noticed   237 00:24:48,480 --> 00:24:53,040 in the past and this is the idea  that Chinese history is made up of   238 00:24:53,040 --> 00:24:59,600 Chinese dynasties, the periodization of history  through Chinese dynasties. This idea that there's   239 00:24:59,600 --> 00:25:04,640 a there was a linear succession of dynasties in  china is deeply ingrained in our language about   240 00:25:06,480 --> 00:25:12,160 uh in our language about Chinese history and  provides a very convenient periodization,   241 00:25:12,160 --> 00:25:17,040 of course. It's not hard to memorize,  uh although there have been inconvenient   242 00:25:17,040 --> 00:25:20,720 periods or there are inconvenient periods,  such as the Northern and Southern Dynasties,   243 00:25:20,720 --> 00:25:24,960 the Three Kingdoms, the Five Dynasties and Ten  Kingdoms, the Six Dynasties, the Sixteen Kingdoms   244 00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:29,360 which, let's face it, these are quite hard and we  all tend to skip these periods because very few   245 00:25:29,360 --> 00:25:35,200 specialists remember what all those individual  states are under those blanket terms. But this   246 00:25:35,200 --> 00:25:38,800 is the periodization, the periodization  of dynasties, it orders our textbooks,   247 00:25:38,800 --> 00:25:43,600 we put it in charts on the wall, we put  it in the end papers of our monographs. 248 00:25:49,440 --> 00:25:55,840 And I just want to show you a  little video, which is quite fun. 249 00:25:59,520 --> 00:26:05,040 This is from some Harvard professors  um, whom some of you may may recognize   250 00:26:05,680 --> 00:26:09,840 and they're going to help us all  learn China's major dynasties. 251 00:26:55,600 --> 00:27:01,440 Okay, so I hope you enjoy that as much  as as much as I do um and yeah obviously   252 00:27:02,560 --> 00:27:09,840 this is what it is right it's a mnemonic and,  as such, it's quite useful and um Peter Bol and   253 00:27:09,840 --> 00:27:15,120 William Kirby are very game for singing the song  and sharing it with us, so I have nothing but   254 00:27:16,400 --> 00:27:20,480 uh uh admiration for them for, you know, um   255 00:27:21,920 --> 00:27:28,640 having the uh for daring to put this out  there that way um. That said though um,   256 00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:33,680 there are a lot of problems with this, and  particularly with the way in which the chart is   257 00:27:33,680 --> 00:27:42,160 abbreviated. For one thing, it jumps immediately  from Han dynasty to Sui, and in so doing it misses   258 00:27:42,160 --> 00:27:48,800 many of those northern states after the Han and  before the Sui, which were, of course, non-Han   259 00:27:48,800 --> 00:27:53,440 states. But very important, right, then, you know,  this is the shenbei period, this is when Buddhism   260 00:27:53,440 --> 00:28:03,680 came into China um, and so on, and in fact these  families, shenbei families, that were part of the   261 00:28:03,680 --> 00:28:09,440 Northern Dynasties actually were married into the  aristocracy in North China became part of the Tang   262 00:28:10,080 --> 00:28:14,720 aristocracy later on and so on, so it skips  over all of the stuff from Han to Sui. 263 00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:18,240 "Sui Tang Song, Sui Tang Song,"   264 00:28:18,240 --> 00:28:27,840 that line telescopes seven full centuries from  580s through 1279 which, likewise, contain   265 00:28:28,560 --> 00:28:32,320 a lot of smaller states and interesting  things which shouldn't be skipped over.   266 00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:38,480 And of course, later on, uh the song  skips the the Khitan and the Jurchen,   267 00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:43,760 not to mention the Xisha which, although  is not one of the official dynasties,   268 00:28:43,760 --> 00:28:48,400 was nonetheless an important power, and  all of which were there at the same time   269 00:28:49,120 --> 00:28:55,680 sharing space in what is now the borders  of the PRC with the Song dynasty, right,   270 00:28:55,680 --> 00:29:02,800 and so it includes the Song but it leaves out  the uh the Jin, the Liao, and the Xisha states. 271 00:29:04,880 --> 00:29:09,680 So um I think the, again, we shouldn't  I shouldn't be spending too much time   272 00:29:09,680 --> 00:29:13,200 just criticizing this simple mnemonic,  except that it's emblematic of broad   273 00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:18,560 systematic problems with the framing and  periodization through the dynastic system.   274 00:29:20,000 --> 00:29:24,240 And even when we drill into more detail in  the dynastic system than we do in this song,   275 00:29:25,040 --> 00:29:31,360 ordering our history of China around these  famous dynasties does a couple of things. 276 00:29:33,760 --> 00:29:38,640 First of all, it highlights polities that  were large, polities that were imperial,   277 00:29:39,600 --> 00:29:47,120 those that were unified, and and highlights those  that were Chinese or Han. And so in so doing,   278 00:29:48,000 --> 00:29:54,640 it leaves out obviously smaller states, uh  it leaves out non-Han states or many of them   279 00:29:54,640 --> 00:29:59,760 uh, it leaves out periods of time when there  were multiple states in a kind of in a pluralist   280 00:29:59,760 --> 00:30:06,480 interstate system in favor of large empires,  and so it's introducing and the dynastic,   281 00:30:07,680 --> 00:30:13,200 this this idea of a linear dynastic series  that we use to structure history, introduces   282 00:30:13,200 --> 00:30:20,800 imperial bias, size bias, what you could call  unity bias, and also Han bias, or Han centrism,   283 00:30:21,520 --> 00:30:27,360 into our structure how we talk about  Chinese states. Now these are the legible   284 00:30:28,080 --> 00:30:32,080 states, these are the legible dynasties, the  big ones, the ones that are easily mapped,   285 00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:37,200 the ones that are easily put into the  charts, but by making those our protagonists,   286 00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:42,400 what are we doing? We're erasing  and downplaying non-Han polities,   287 00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:49,360 we're ignoring very long periods, really, of  multiple diverse co-existing policies in favor of   288 00:30:49,360 --> 00:30:54,560 periods of expansive empires. And so the messy  periods get left on the cutting room floor,   289 00:30:55,280 --> 00:31:00,560 but that illusion is not is not ethnically  neutral and it's not politically neutral,   290 00:31:00,560 --> 00:31:05,520 it's doubling down on a particular vision,  a particularly normative vision, of what   291 00:31:05,520 --> 00:31:13,760 the Chinese past should look like: Unified,  Imperial and mainly Han. All right. 292 00:31:17,440 --> 00:31:24,800 So why do we use this word dynasty at all um  for translating, you know, the Chinese terms   293 00:31:24,800 --> 00:31:32,400 chao or chaodai, right, that's the underlying  term here. Well this word uh dynasty comes from   294 00:31:32,400 --> 00:31:39,920 uh ancient Greek, dunastea, and in Aristotle's  politics, he used it to mean lordship sovereignty. 295 00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:47,520 Sorry I was just distracted by by the chat, I  shouldn't be reading it. Um he was he meant,   296 00:31:47,520 --> 00:31:54,800 you know, a power, a regime uh and this was  the earliest meaning of in European languages,   297 00:31:54,800 --> 00:32:01,600 namely of a of a power, of a regime, of a  particular sovereignty like that. It was used in,   298 00:32:01,600 --> 00:32:07,120 one of its earliest uses in English, dynasty was  used in the 17th century by Sir Walter Raleigh,   299 00:32:08,240 --> 00:32:13,840 who referred to the histories of the Assyrians,  the Trojans, the Italians, and others etc.   300 00:32:14,640 --> 00:32:19,920 as dynasties, those states as dynasties.  By the 18th century, this term already had   301 00:32:19,920 --> 00:32:25,440 another meaning in English and it was being  used back and forth in French and English, so   302 00:32:25,440 --> 00:32:30,320 both in French and English had another  meaning and that is a succession of rulers   303 00:32:30,320 --> 00:32:36,240 of the same line or family, a line of kings  or princes, now there I'm quoting from um the   304 00:32:36,240 --> 00:32:41,040 OED from the 20th century, the Oxford English  Dictionary, and the Oxford English Dictionary   305 00:32:41,040 --> 00:32:46,000 says that that this meaning, namely of  a lineage of of rulers or family line   306 00:32:46,000 --> 00:32:53,600 uh, that this is now the standard definition that  the older meaning of uh regime uh is archaic.   307 00:32:55,120 --> 00:32:59,200 Now already back in the 18th century, though,  both of these meanings were there and people were   308 00:32:59,200 --> 00:33:04,640 arguing over them. So Voltaire had a debate  with uh someone named Pierre Henri Larcher   309 00:33:06,160 --> 00:33:08,880 over which was the right meaning  and Larcher said that dynasty   310 00:33:08,880 --> 00:33:16,160 means une suite de Rois de la même famille, a line  of kings of the same family and Voltaire said no,   311 00:33:18,320 --> 00:33:24,240 dynastie signifie proprement pouvoir, dynasty  properly means power. Now today they would   312 00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:29,520 have had this as a twitter debate, uh in those  days it was in the footnotes of encyclopedia,   313 00:33:30,240 --> 00:33:36,800 so we've gotten more efficient in our in our  academic spatting these days. So this is a Google   314 00:33:38,080 --> 00:33:45,280 Ngram and what it does is it charts the frequency  of appearance of a word, or set of words or terms,   315 00:33:45,920 --> 00:33:52,480 in the books that google has scanned. And it's  not a perfect measure, but it can also often be a   316 00:33:53,440 --> 00:33:58,320 interesting proxy for how you words are  used and so you see right here in the   317 00:33:58,320 --> 00:34:03,840 middle of the 18th century that the usage  really picks up, and this is in English,   318 00:34:04,560 --> 00:34:10,480 it really picks up like that um, you know, through  the 19th to the 19th century. Now the first, 319 00:34:13,200 --> 00:34:19,440 uh the first text that I was able to find that  uses dynasty together, in context with China   320 00:34:19,440 --> 00:34:23,920 as opposed to talking about ancient Egypt or  Assyria or something like that, the first one   321 00:34:23,920 --> 00:34:29,520 that I found was Du Halde's "General History of  China" uh it was translated into English in 1767,   322 00:34:29,520 --> 00:34:34,720 it was written originally in French, and  published the year before and it was based   323 00:34:34,720 --> 00:34:39,040 on Du Halde wrote this book, which  is very influential in the field,   324 00:34:39,680 --> 00:34:46,240 he wrote it based on letters written by Jesuits  in the Qing court and sent back to France,   325 00:34:46,240 --> 00:34:50,240 which he had access to these edifying  letters coming from the Jesuits. 326 00:34:55,280 --> 00:35:00,000 And so you see that he um, you know, numbered  them out like this, which I think is interesting,   327 00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:05,760 we don't do that anymore uh, and was  applying uh implying this word um,   328 00:35:05,760 --> 00:35:10,720 right around the same time that Voltaire  and La Cher were arguing over whether it   329 00:35:10,720 --> 00:35:20,240 meant a family line or whether it simply meant a  regime or or a power. Now, there's a lot more we   330 00:35:20,240 --> 00:35:25,840 could say about this and how dynasties are used,  generally I want to just kind of summarize though 331 00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:35,840 um what I see as the problems with using this  notion of dynasty uh to structure our history   332 00:35:35,840 --> 00:35:42,240 of China. And, you know, we'll note that we use  it as family line talking about other places,   333 00:35:42,240 --> 00:35:45,680 we'll talk about the Hapsburg Dynasty  sometimes, for example, in Europe,   334 00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:50,240 but we generally don't use  it as a name of a of a state   335 00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:55,920 quite the same way that we do for China. That is  very exceptionalist, that's very idiosyncratic   336 00:35:55,920 --> 00:36:02,400 to our discussion of Chinese history. And for  the reasons that I mentioned before, because of   337 00:36:02,400 --> 00:36:07,840 the way we tend to simplify it and focus on the  large and the imperial and the Han, this dynasty   338 00:36:07,840 --> 00:36:14,080 system ingrains Han centrism, unity-bias,  size-bias, and it's implicitly teleological,   339 00:36:15,120 --> 00:36:20,000 while at the same time it elides the non-Han  and, in particular, multi-state periods   340 00:36:20,000 --> 00:36:25,200 on the East Asian mainland. And so in this  way, it's supporting a nationalist notion of   341 00:36:25,200 --> 00:36:32,240 what China should be, that it should be large, it  should be unified, um it should be under Han rule   342 00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:40,240 and in a way it's kind of that's quite similar to  the manifest destiny idea I think in in US history   343 00:36:40,240 --> 00:36:47,040 or in US historiography. The term  dynasty also is clearly orientalist,   344 00:36:47,040 --> 00:36:52,720 right, it was used to talk about Egypt,  Assyria, Italia- Italy now and then,   345 00:36:52,720 --> 00:36:56,720 but you know English had these sort of views  of other places in Southern Europe like this,   346 00:36:57,520 --> 00:37:03,360 but in particular it's used in even beyond  China, where dynasty is used uh to contrast   347 00:37:05,360 --> 00:37:11,440 bad ancient regimes or traditional powers with  the modern nation state and there's been some   348 00:37:11,440 --> 00:37:16,560 discussion of this theoretical, discussion  of this in European history um, a special   349 00:37:16,560 --> 00:37:22,000 issue journal goes into a lot of these kinds of  things um so it is one of those, you know, old   350 00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:27,440 orientalist terms that is still hung around in the  way we talk about modern talk about China today.   351 00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:37,040 And I think that, as such, it's impossible to  decouple this I our the term dynasty and using   352 00:37:38,560 --> 00:37:43,120 naming the different periods of history in  China dynasties it's impossible to decouple   353 00:37:43,120 --> 00:37:49,840 that uh from the idea of the dynastic cycle  and, of course, this dynastic cycle is really a   354 00:37:50,480 --> 00:37:57,760 ideological, or almost kind of quasi-religious,  idea that there's a great way of heaven which   355 00:37:57,760 --> 00:38:04,160 determines the rise and fall of states, that once  something reaches its peak it's going to decline,   356 00:38:04,160 --> 00:38:11,440 once something reaches it's nadir it's going to  rise again, and so on um. That's not a, you know,   357 00:38:11,440 --> 00:38:14,640 historians today try not to subscribe to these   358 00:38:14,640 --> 00:38:21,360 metaphysical notions about great laws of history  like this. And in a way it's kind of funny,   359 00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:26,960 some of you may remember or may have read Paul  Cohen's book, "Discovering History in China" 360 00:38:29,200 --> 00:38:36,160 and that was a very important revision of  ways in which uh people have been talking   361 00:38:36,160 --> 00:38:44,160 about Chinese history through the 1970s or so  um, and I think this book came out in 1980s,   362 00:38:44,960 --> 00:38:50,160 and one of the things he highlighted there  was the notion of "stagnant China," and how   363 00:38:50,160 --> 00:38:55,280 that was really wrong, and he also highlighted  the, what he called, the "tradition modernity   364 00:38:56,080 --> 00:39:03,200 dichotomy," or "dyad," and that we're always  using that to structure how we talked about um   365 00:39:03,200 --> 00:39:08,560 about about China. And really, this the idea  of the dynastic cycle and this term dynasty,   366 00:39:08,560 --> 00:39:14,960 I think, is imprecated in those old-fashioned  approaches to Chinese history too, I think Cohen   367 00:39:14,960 --> 00:39:21,840 missed this um and he didn't flag dynasty at the  time, but in a way, it's really, I think, uh of   368 00:39:21,840 --> 00:39:29,040 the same type as those things that he critiqued  way back in the 1980s, you know, when we're   369 00:39:29,040 --> 00:39:34,880 talking about China as a series of dynasties,  this kind of cycling series of dynasties,   370 00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:41,120 we're really still talking about China as caught  in this, you know, recursive cycle, the idea of   371 00:39:41,120 --> 00:39:47,920 of cycling through dynasties without ever really  changing and just waiting for modernity, waiting   372 00:39:47,920 --> 00:39:52,880 for the modern nation-state before real change  could happen and that's a very old-fashioned way   373 00:39:52,880 --> 00:39:58,560 of looking at Chinese historiography and one  that we really don't uh subscribe to anymore. 374 00:40:01,040 --> 00:40:07,360 And I guess, finally, what's quite important  is that the word now, dynasty, really doesn't   375 00:40:07,360 --> 00:40:12,000 even mean what it meant when it was first  applied to China in European languages in   376 00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:17,840 the 18th century. Then, I think it's pretty clear  that it was being used in the sense of a power,   377 00:40:17,840 --> 00:40:24,720 a regime, but now it means a family and not a  state, right, so if we're going to use the word   378 00:40:24,720 --> 00:40:30,640 dynasty the way we actually use it most of the  time in English, we would say that the Li Dynasty   379 00:40:31,840 --> 00:40:39,680 were the rulers of the Tang Empire, or the  Aisin-Gioro Dynasty were the emperors of the Qing   380 00:40:39,680 --> 00:40:44,160 Empire and expanded into inner Asia for example,  right, we'd use it for the name of the family,   381 00:40:44,720 --> 00:40:53,680 rather than for the state. When we confuse ruling  lineage for the actual name of the state itself,   382 00:40:54,640 --> 00:41:00,880 it creates a false impression, right, as  Brook, Timothy Brooks jacket copy said   383 00:41:00,880 --> 00:41:07,200 dynasties pass from one to another but China  remains China, right, it gives this impression   384 00:41:07,200 --> 00:41:13,760 that that China is this kind of eternal bottle  into which new wine gets poured every now and then   385 00:41:13,760 --> 00:41:20,880 or in poured out, but the bottle itself stays the  same, but we know that ethnically, territorially,   386 00:41:20,880 --> 00:41:25,520 um in terms of the structure of these  states, their size, and so on and so forth,   387 00:41:25,520 --> 00:41:30,240 dynasties are really very different from  each other uh in in a wide range of of ways.   388 00:41:32,240 --> 00:41:36,800 All right, so what should we say instead of  dynasty, it would be, you know, it would not be   389 00:41:36,800 --> 00:41:42,320 easy to to extract dynasty to extirpate dynasties  in the way we talk about the Chinese past, I know   390 00:41:42,320 --> 00:41:48,080 this, and I'm certainly not telling anybody  writing in and working in Chinese that they   391 00:41:48,080 --> 00:41:54,000 shouldn't use chao or chaodai because that is an  indigenous term, that is a term with a very long   392 00:41:54,000 --> 00:42:02,720 history, it's how uh people in China have referred  to these states uh for uh many many centuries. 393 00:42:05,200 --> 00:42:10,480 What I'm saying though is that dynasty  is itself a bad translation for chao   394 00:42:11,760 --> 00:42:14,560 and it's bad in certain ways, as I said before,   395 00:42:14,560 --> 00:42:19,600 that produce systematically repressive  and systematically displacing effects. 396 00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:27,280 And I'd add, furthermore, that that this word  dynasty, or the translation dynasty for chao,   397 00:42:28,080 --> 00:42:33,600 is actually one of the key words of of  Chinese history um like, you know, barbarian   398 00:42:34,480 --> 00:42:41,120 as a translation for yi or like tribute as  a translation for gong or arguably like the   399 00:42:41,120 --> 00:42:46,960 word China itself which, of course, is a foreign  word that there are many different Chinese words   400 00:42:46,960 --> 00:42:54,080 that can be used as equivalent for. These kinds  of terms developed in international discourse   401 00:42:54,080 --> 00:42:59,360 over the centuries, Lydia Liu has called them  super signs and she's talked about how they   402 00:42:59,360 --> 00:43:05,440 develop in what she calls "translingual lingual  practice," and they become these key words these   403 00:43:05,440 --> 00:43:10,320 concepts whereby we talk about the Chinese  past, but we really need to scrutinize them   404 00:43:10,320 --> 00:43:19,360 a lot more and we certainly can't uh accept  this uh 18th century translation as the term   405 00:43:19,360 --> 00:43:26,400 we should use forevermore in talk to  uh equate to the Chinese word of chao. 406 00:43:28,800 --> 00:43:34,720 So for now, I suggest the following. I suggest  that we should stop calling China-based states   407 00:43:34,720 --> 00:43:40,640 dynasties and we should be more inclusive  in the way we deal with non-Chinese states,   408 00:43:41,680 --> 00:43:47,680 so don't leave out the Tuoba, don't leave out  the Xisha, or the Nanjiao or the Altan-Khan   409 00:43:47,680 --> 00:43:52,800 or other things like this, other states and  powers like this, even if they aren't part of   410 00:43:52,800 --> 00:43:57,760 the official Daotong, the official  lineage of dynasties, they were there,   411 00:43:57,760 --> 00:44:07,840 they played important international roles, they  played important social and cultural roles. 412 00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:14,880 I think rather we should call these  states by their names by the, you know,   413 00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:21,040 Han, Qing, Tang, Wei, or whatever and then add  an appropriate descriptor of the kind of state   414 00:44:21,040 --> 00:44:27,920 that they are, are they a kingdom? Are they a  confederation? Are they an empire? And when you   415 00:44:27,920 --> 00:44:32,320 think about that, it actually reveals how much we  lose by just calling everything dynasty because   416 00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:40,000 there's a big difference between uh for  example the Chi dynasty and the Qing dynasty,   417 00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:47,120 right, um in types of states that they  were and yet, we we occlude, we hide   418 00:44:47,120 --> 00:44:50,880 all of these differences about political  differences and minister differences and   419 00:44:50,880 --> 00:44:56,080 everything else um let me just call everything  a dynasty like that, so be more specific about   420 00:44:56,080 --> 00:44:59,440 the type of statement we're talking about  I think that would be that would be useful. 421 00:45:01,520 --> 00:45:08,560 Now, of course, of course, there is great  cultural continuity across this entire time   422 00:45:08,560 --> 00:45:16,560 period, I'm not saying that that the linguistic  continuity and even historiographic continuity,   423 00:45:16,560 --> 00:45:22,240 right, the the model laid down by Sima  Qian and the and the uh the Hanshu,   424 00:45:22,800 --> 00:45:27,440 those models were continued in later historical  writing as well. So I'm not saying that there   425 00:45:27,440 --> 00:45:35,440 was not this uh cultural acumen, or cultural  continuity, it's really raining hard here   426 00:45:35,440 --> 00:45:38,960 I hope you can still hear me okay because  the wind is blowing rain is pouring down. 427 00:45:41,680 --> 00:45:43,520 So I'm not denying that continuity at all, 428 00:45:45,600 --> 00:45:49,680 I think we should use China  though uh as a geographical marker   429 00:45:50,640 --> 00:45:56,080 uh and Chinese as a cultural descriptor for this  for this real continuity that I'm talking about.   430 00:45:56,080 --> 00:46:02,560 And in that sense it's again very similar to the  idea of Christendom in Europe or the Islamicate in   431 00:46:02,560 --> 00:46:11,760 the Islamic in the Islamic lands and we could even  introduce the term the sincate, s-i-n-i-c-a-t-e,   432 00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:18,000 we can introduce that as the term parallel  to the idea of of of Europe or Christendom   433 00:46:18,000 --> 00:46:24,880 in parallel to the idea of the Islamicate as a  way of capturing this broader uh cultural zone and   434 00:46:25,520 --> 00:46:33,120 the cultural and literary and even, in continuity,  even in administrative systems without,   435 00:46:33,120 --> 00:46:39,360 at the same time, implying political continuity  across these centuries and millennia. 436 00:46:41,600 --> 00:46:45,040 And that way, the Confucian tradition um   437 00:46:45,040 --> 00:46:51,360 appears to be in many ways quite parallel to the  Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian tradition in Europe,   438 00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:58,240 or to the Arabo-Persian Islamic tradition  in the Islamicate. And it's helpful to   439 00:46:58,240 --> 00:47:04,480 distinguish them, as I said, this enduring  cultural acumen from specific polities. 440 00:47:07,840 --> 00:47:14,240 All right, so um we're getting close to time here  I think and so I want to wrap up pretty quickly,   441 00:47:16,160 --> 00:47:19,280 I'm not going to go into all this, but I just  put some of my notes up here so you can kind   442 00:47:19,280 --> 00:47:24,960 of see where I'm going with this. When we get  into specific terminology, as opposed to the   443 00:47:24,960 --> 00:47:30,880 broader concepts I was talking about, um some  of these issues are familiar uh already, right,   444 00:47:30,880 --> 00:47:40,000 the idea of, you know, so unify, tongyi, is a is a  euphemism used in the PRC uh, mainly for military   445 00:47:40,000 --> 00:47:48,880 conquest such as Xinjiang was unified um and so on  uh. And so obviously there's we have to be careful   446 00:47:48,880 --> 00:47:57,680 in using those kind of terms and being not being a  stenographer for uh nationalistic, PRC propaganda.   447 00:47:58,560 --> 00:48:06,320 We tend to use the r-e, the re uh  prefix, quite a lot: reconquer, reunify   448 00:48:06,320 --> 00:48:11,680 uh and I think we need to think about think about  that because that of course implies that unity is   449 00:48:11,680 --> 00:48:18,560 the norm or that some things uh were unified  before. Xinjiang had not really been part of   450 00:48:19,120 --> 00:48:24,960 any China-based state for a thousand  years when the Qing empire conquered it,   451 00:48:24,960 --> 00:48:30,640 so is that a reunification? You know, we have  to watch out for, you know, not as as that quote   452 00:48:30,640 --> 00:48:36,240 from Timothy Brook did, treating China as this  kind of imminent spirit that is always there,   453 00:48:36,240 --> 00:48:40,560 even when in fact it is not. So you can see  what I'm talking about with those kinds of terms   454 00:48:42,240 --> 00:48:49,760 um. Tributaries, issues with that, kind of  working in the other way um, sometimes people   455 00:48:49,760 --> 00:48:56,480 will assume that tributaries were in fact close  vassals to a Chinese state when they weren't.   456 00:48:57,920 --> 00:49:03,280 And then this issue of talking about frontiers,  borders, borderlands, and peripheries and here   457 00:49:03,280 --> 00:49:11,360 I want to issue a mea culpa here because um some  time ago I wrote a chapter about frontier studies,   458 00:49:11,360 --> 00:49:16,080 I was talking about the Qing empire and  and advocating that we should introduce   459 00:49:16,080 --> 00:49:21,520 frontier studies as a way of talking about  the Qing, and I still think that's useful, 460 00:49:23,680 --> 00:49:32,640 but um what I really was somewhat blinded  to I guess, or or chose not to do to,   461 00:49:32,640 --> 00:49:37,520 the direction I chose not to go in, was really to  talk about some of these territories as colonies   462 00:49:38,320 --> 00:49:42,640 um and um you know in many, many  ways whether we're talking about   463 00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:47,840 20th century or even if we're talking about  the Qing, whether we're talking about um   464 00:49:48,800 --> 00:49:54,240 imperial conquests or whether we're talking about  settler colonies, in which, you know, Han people   465 00:49:54,240 --> 00:50:00,560 have been moved or have moved themselves, there  there's great parallels to colonies elsewhere,   466 00:50:01,680 --> 00:50:08,480 and so I think we've really avoided that term  uh far too much in talking about, for example,   467 00:50:09,440 --> 00:50:15,520 Xinjiang. There are very strong colonial aspects  both for Qing and certainly to PRC rule in uh in   468 00:50:15,520 --> 00:50:22,640 Xinjiang. Um and as I note here uh Liang Qichao  and Sun Yat-sen both used the term, Sun Yat-sen   469 00:50:22,640 --> 00:50:28,320 had a companion book to his Sanmin Zhuyi, to his  three people's principles, this companion book was   470 00:50:28,320 --> 00:50:37,440 called the "International Development of China"  and it was basically a big appeal to international   471 00:50:37,440 --> 00:50:42,560 capitalists and other states to invest in the  new Chinese republic, which he was hoping to 472 00:50:44,640 --> 00:50:48,960 be continue to be the president of he wrote  the president of, he wrote this in 1922.   473 00:50:49,840 --> 00:50:52,640 And there's a whole section there on  the colonization of Mongolia and the   474 00:50:52,640 --> 00:50:58,000 colonization of Xinjiang which involves building  railroads, as he was very fond of talking about   475 00:50:58,880 --> 00:51:06,160 and moving Han people out there to open the  agriculture. So this simply reminds us that   476 00:51:06,160 --> 00:51:13,440 the word colony was not a dirty word 100 years  ago, it was used in the United States context   477 00:51:13,440 --> 00:51:20,960 as well, Japan embraced it early on, and so on, so  I think it's certainly reasonable to start talking   478 00:51:20,960 --> 00:51:29,200 about uh Qing borderlands and the uh acquisition  of Xinjiang, Tibet, and other places uh by the   479 00:51:29,200 --> 00:51:35,840 PRC uh as as colonies and this of course again  opens up comparative historical possibilities. 480 00:51:38,320 --> 00:51:44,560 All right, so then just to, oh right, some other  terms- I have another slide, but I won't bother   481 00:51:44,560 --> 00:51:52,640 with that, some other terms that we should  be thinking about um terms for people and for   482 00:51:52,640 --> 00:51:58,880 and for peoples, right, so obviously minzu is a  very complicated word that has multiple meanings   483 00:51:58,880 --> 00:52:03,200 that change over time and sometimes even at  the same time. If we think about the meaning   484 00:52:03,200 --> 00:52:09,280 of minzu in a term, for example like, you know,  so it means this- I'm sorry- for those of you   485 00:52:09,280 --> 00:52:14,960 who might not know Chinese, minzu is a term we  use to translate uh ethnic, sometimes national,   486 00:52:14,960 --> 00:52:19,280 it's a neologism that was put together by  the Japanese and then incorporated early in   487 00:52:19,280 --> 00:52:26,080 the 20th century and promulgated very a lot  through the writings of Liang Qichao actually,   488 00:52:26,080 --> 00:52:30,240 um but it's been used in many many different  ways so we have to be very careful about   489 00:52:30,240 --> 00:52:37,760 it and in particular the term xiaoshuo minzu,  minority nationality, is a political term of art   490 00:52:37,760 --> 00:52:44,560 that has been adopted in the PRC referring  to all of the other 55 minzu besides the Han.   491 00:52:45,520 --> 00:52:54,160 And yes, when you are counting within the entire  territory of the PRC then the uh any group who   492 00:52:54,160 --> 00:53:00,640 is not Han is a statistical minority, but it  is, I think, very problematic to talk about   493 00:53:00,640 --> 00:53:06,480 Tibetans, for example, as a minority in Tibet.  Um and if if you think about, for example,   494 00:53:06,480 --> 00:53:13,920 we talked about the Navajo as an American  minority, that would raise some some hackles and   495 00:53:13,920 --> 00:53:18,160 we might not feel that comfortable, but I think  this is a similar sort of uh sort of issue here,   496 00:53:18,160 --> 00:53:24,080 so we have to be careful with this minority uh  minority term. So then what else, well that then,   497 00:53:24,080 --> 00:53:29,040 you know, mentioning Navajo brings up the  question of indigenes and indigenous peoples   498 00:53:30,720 --> 00:53:34,800 and this is a subject that could easily we  could talk about this for another hour and so   499 00:53:34,800 --> 00:53:42,000 I don't want to get too much into it, although  we can talk about it in Q&A if you want to um,   500 00:53:42,000 --> 00:53:46,240 some people embrace the terms, some Uighurs  of diaspora embrace the term, some do not,   501 00:53:46,240 --> 00:53:53,200 it has particular meanings um it opens some  political possibilities for some communities,   502 00:53:53,200 --> 00:53:58,240 but it also tends to imply stateless  people and for many people it's mired   503 00:53:58,240 --> 00:54:07,120 in uh 19th century notions of of of tribal or  primitive peoples um, so it's a complex word,   504 00:54:07,120 --> 00:54:10,560 but I think you know we should start thinking  about thinking about using it more, of course,   505 00:54:10,560 --> 00:54:17,440 Taiwan has embraced the um discourse of  indigeneity for non-Chinese peoples in Taiwan. 506 00:54:19,760 --> 00:54:23,840 Another interesting term, which I won't go into  here, but it's the idea of overseas Chinese.   507 00:54:25,280 --> 00:54:31,840 Are Chinese, are sinophone people, are people  of sinic descent around the world are they all   508 00:54:31,840 --> 00:54:40,480 overseas Chinese um, does this diaspora  have a uh have it have a expiration date   509 00:54:40,480 --> 00:54:46,560 uh, as the scholar uh Shi Shumei,  uh Shumei Shi, has asked. All right,   510 00:54:46,560 --> 00:54:51,840 um so there's a range of these kinds of terms  we should we could be thinking about I think. 511 00:54:54,880 --> 00:55:03,920 So, just to conclude um, I think well I may be  accused of separatism or perhaps of imperialism   512 00:55:03,920 --> 00:55:09,920 or of trying to keep China down or trying  to balkanize china or I might be accused of   513 00:55:09,920 --> 00:55:15,120 hypocrisy because the US is, likewise, a colonial  power oppressing oppressing its indigenous people   514 00:55:15,680 --> 00:55:21,360 and non-white minorities, as it absolutely  is, that's going to happen. But I want to   515 00:55:21,360 --> 00:55:26,160 point out that I'm not telling people working  in Chinese language how to talk about China,   516 00:55:26,720 --> 00:55:31,280 rather I'm concerned with the interpretation and  translation issues in the field as it's written   517 00:55:31,280 --> 00:55:35,520 in English and other European languages, so far  as I'm aware of those other European languages. 518 00:55:39,600 --> 00:55:44,320 Just a sort of point there um, those of  us who work in English, we tend not to   519 00:55:44,320 --> 00:55:48,720 maybe we read a little French or maybe now and  then we, you know, primary source in German   520 00:55:48,720 --> 00:55:54,880 or something like that, we tend not to read too  much sinological writing in uh European languages   521 00:55:55,680 --> 00:56:00,560 other than French and German. I was thinking  when I was talking about these keywords I was   522 00:56:00,560 --> 00:56:06,720 thinking about the word zuguo, right, which is  translated in English, of course, as motherland,   523 00:56:07,920 --> 00:56:16,080 right, well of course zu means the eternal clan  so it's sort of how do you get to motherland,   524 00:56:16,080 --> 00:56:20,960 one might translate it as fatherland, but  of course if you say fatherland in English   525 00:56:20,960 --> 00:56:27,120 that doesn't sound good at all because of  um resonances with uh with Nazi Germany,   526 00:56:27,760 --> 00:56:34,080 right, so so whoever came up with the translation  of motherland um this was a good piece of of of   527 00:56:34,080 --> 00:56:39,680 marketing, it was actually pretty smart a smart  translation. Um but just I was curious and I   528 00:56:39,680 --> 00:56:45,680 looked it up and um in Spanish and Portuguese, and  I assume other languages closely related to Latin,   529 00:56:45,680 --> 00:56:51,040 zuguo is in fact translated as patria  because there is no such word as matria,   530 00:56:51,760 --> 00:56:57,680 right, in those languages um and so, again,  I haven't read widely in other languages,   531 00:56:57,680 --> 00:57:03,040 but we shouldn't assume that the English  language is is uh entirely hegemonic in   532 00:57:03,600 --> 00:57:08,640 uh setting the terms and it shouldn't be hegemonic  and setting the terms about how other non-Chinese   533 00:57:08,640 --> 00:57:12,800 languages talk about this, so there may be  room for some interesting comparisons there. 534 00:57:15,040 --> 00:57:21,040 Anyway I think it's important to think about  the meanings of these words in translation and   535 00:57:21,040 --> 00:57:28,160 perhaps especially important to think about this  question of words such as dynasty or minzu or any   536 00:57:28,160 --> 00:57:36,960 of these key words. And the reason why one,  another reason why this is important is that 537 00:57:39,280 --> 00:57:45,600 sometimes the meanings of the words themselves  and the concepts that we use to talk about history   538 00:57:45,600 --> 00:57:50,480 are going to be most appare- most apparent  when we look at them from the precincts   539 00:57:50,480 --> 00:57:56,720 of another language because the very act of  having to translate these terms into English   540 00:57:57,440 --> 00:58:01,600 makes us have to think about what they  mean and it also makes us realize that   541 00:58:01,600 --> 00:58:04,640 they often mean different  things at different times   542 00:58:04,640 --> 00:58:10,080 in the Chinese record itself, minzu is, of  course, a very good example example of that. 543 00:58:12,240 --> 00:58:16,640 And so this linguistic, geographical, and  political distance gives historians to China   544 00:58:16,640 --> 00:58:21,040 outside of China perspective  on the normative frames on   545 00:58:21,760 --> 00:58:25,840 the normative frames and language of  Chinese historiography in Chinese language   546 00:58:25,840 --> 00:58:30,800 by virtue of having to translate and compare  Chinese terms to those of other historiographies   547 00:58:31,440 --> 00:58:36,000 and now is a critical time for us to use  that perspective as comparative advantage   548 00:58:36,000 --> 00:58:39,760 to recover and communicate to our readers  and students and to Chinese colleagues   549 00:58:40,480 --> 00:58:46,480 and to the Chinese Communist Party, PRC state,  to communicate to them the great diversity of   550 00:58:46,480 --> 00:58:52,320 East Asian- I'm sorry- to communicate to them the  great diversity of the East Asian continental past   551 00:58:53,680 --> 00:58:58,160 and to do so from spirit of trying to  contribute to a global joint venture   552 00:58:58,160 --> 00:59:02,800 of Chinese historiography. And I think in doing  this we have a responsibility to the past,   553 00:59:02,800 --> 00:59:13,360 the present, and also the future and  so I'll stop my formal remarks there.